The Collectors Showcase Waffen SS - Kursk: LAH Machine Gun Team

Collectors Showcase CS00214 Waffen SS - Kursk: LAH Machine Gun Team (1:28 Scale)"We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."- Adolf Hitler, commenting on the imminent German invasion of Russia in 1941

The Waffen-SS (German for "Armed SS", literally "Weapons SS") was the combat arm of the Schutzstaffel. It was founded in Germany in 1939 after the SS was split into 2 organisations: Allgemeine-SS and the Waffen-SS. The title of Waffen-SS became official on March 2, 1940.

Headed by Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the Waffen-SS saw action throughout the Second World War. It had three sub-organizations:

Leibstandarte - Adolf Hitler's bodyguard regiment.
Totenkopfverbande - Administered the concentration camps.
Verfugungstruppe - Up to 39 divisions in World War II that served as elite combat troops alongside the regular army Wehrmacht. In the testimony given at the Nuremberg Trials, the Waffen-SS was condemned as a criminal organization due to their involvement with the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), except conscripts, who were exempted from the judgment on the basis of involuntary servitude. Therefore Waffen-SS veterans were denied many of the rights afforded to other German combat veterans who had served in the Heer, Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine.

Pictured here is a Waffen SS LAH machine gun team then deployed to Kursk during 1943. Sold Out!

Historical Account: "The Bodyguard Regiment" - The Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) was Adolf Hitler's personal Bodyguard Regiment ("Leibstandarte" being a somewhat archaic German expression for the personal bodyguard of a military leader). The LSSAH independently participated in combat during the Invasion of Poland. The LSSAH was amalgamated into the Waffen-SS together with the SS-VT and the combat units of the SS-TV prior to Operation Barbarossa in 1941. By the end of World War II it had been increased in size from a regiment to a Panzer division. The elite division was a component of the Waffen-SS which was found guilty of war crimes in the Nuremberg Trials.